Acts of Becoming (1995, 2017)

ACTS OF BECOMING is a solo of displaced memories and survival traces.

Originally made in 1994 as an homage to Gertrud Bodenwieser (b.1890 Vienna, d.1957 Sydney) and as part of my PhD, I redeveloped this work for performances in the National Gallery Victoria as part of Rachel Fensham's curated event, Dancing Sculpture.

Performing with what remains, I dialogue across times and places whilst gesturing to the body politic of women who risk everything.

Bodenwieser trained dancers, Hilde Holger, Emmy Taussig, Shona Dunlop, Magda Hoyos, Hilary Napier, Trudl Dubsky, Bettina Vernon and Evelyn Ippen are women who either escaped, or went into self-imposed exile, as a result of the rise of fascism in Austria and Germany in the 1930s. Displaced from the cultural milieu that supported the development of Bodenwieser’s specific style of expressive modernism, they adapted to the New World they found themselves in, in South America, the Philipines, India, New Zealand and Australia. Performing the role of host to their displaced and disappeared dance memories, I reimagined the Bodenwieser Tanzgruppe as a dispersed pluriverse; a choreographic worldview marked by global, ecstatic, eccentric and sensual shapes and figures. This resonant physical-vocal performance drew attention to hospitality and the hosting of strangers with their strange moves, during turbulent times.